Well.. its here, tomorrow I am doing an entrance exam on university. I've been sleeping in pile of books for last 5 days, hoping that at least a few more words will jump into my mind.. tomorrow we will see if it did any good..

THe problem is, our philosophy teacher on high school sucked heavily and was teaching us history, instead of the thoughts and ideas... So I had to do all on my own, which is really NOT funny in philosophy, since most of these things are VERY hard to understand without a proper guidance... To make matters worse, the level of knowdledge that is needed on those exams is still a tad bit higher than what I have managed to force into my head...

What to say.. pray for me guys:D I really want to study it, cos I love those things.. but this will be reeeeeeally hard

So are you going to study philosophy at the uni or is it just the requirement for the entry?

Either way: thumbs up, fingers and toes crossed for you man! I've studied a lot of philosophy and I can understand that most of the times it's hard get the hang of it and understand everything... let alone LEARN them in a manner that you can recall all this knowledge in a structured way!

Philosophy is one of the easiest studies to start here in Poland, but maybe it is different in Czech Republic... I will keep my thumbs for You Jakub, hope everything work out fine, it is one of the most important things in our "teenage" lives to study what we are interested in. (I know it after choosing wrong thing to study..)

My PhD/Doctorate is in philosophy - easy to start but perhaps one, if not the, most difficult subject to truly understand. There's a reason why philosophy has been called 'the Queen of knowledge' .

Maybe your teacher concentrated on the history of philosophy since at degree level that may be what he was taught.

As a suggestion, if you have time try and ensure you have an understanding of the different philosophical 'schools' - ie pragmaticism, phenomenology, positivism, English empiricism etc. and what makes them tick - that are on your syllabus. A lot of students seem to struggle with this - certainly at degree level -than with actual concepts like Dasein, supercession, ipseity, etc.

Yeah Tony has some great tips: it's easier if you're not only concentrating on one keyword of philosopher, but rather on the bigger "schools" and trends - especially when getting closer to the modern period (back from Descartes all along to the 20th century).

Philosophy is a great thing to study so once again wish you all the best

Well problem is, that I have the test from last year and those questions are really hillarious...

I will post two of them... kudos to who knows them..

When Kratylos said "You cannot enter the same river not even once", he wanted to say that:A) nothing exists nothing lastsC) we cannot distinguish subject from object

I know just similiar quote from herakleitos but thats something completely different... Or is there some sort of catch? His name isnt even on our wikipedia and now thats something.. my books dont mention him other that he was a student of Herakleitos (that enclares, why he changed and used Herakleitos's statement)

Cratylus said that everything changes very fast. The river is something else all the time. Don't know it it means that it nothing exist, or that nothing lasts. I would go for the "nothing lasts" answer.

If it comes to Kant, than answer C, Criticism of Pure Reason was metaphysical topics. I had short descriptions of many philosophies in high school, sometimes we read some fragments of philosophers works. Most probably in Your country something similar is in "education program", another thing is that most teachers won't do it.

PS: I must say that those guys had to much free time, often people that have to much time start to produce such wicked theories

Marek gave both answers correctly, although these questions are a bit confusing. I don't think tho, that you're supposed to have read Kant's book or all of Kratylos's (we call him Heracleitus here...) fragments. What you'll need is the general overview of all these important philosophers and their works - only the stuff that is mentioned in "History of (Western) Philosophy" kind of books

When Kratylos said "You cannot enter the same river not even once", he wanted to say that:A) nothing exists nothing lastsC) we cannot distinguish subject from object

I know just similiar quote from herakleitos but thats something completely different... Or is there some sort of catch? His name isnt even on our wikipedia and now thats something.. my books dont mention him other that he was a student of Herakleitos (that enclares, why he changed and used Herakleitos's statement)

Lets take it from the perspective of what schools of philosophy they were in.-------------------------------------------------------------------First question.

Heraclitus (Cratylus is the name of a book by Plato on pre-socratic philosophy) was a pre-socratic. He's part of the Ionian school with Thales and Anaxamander. Not a lot of coherence in this school to be honest, perhaps due to the misreadings and lack of original works that still exist for analysis. Anyway taking it as read - Plato point to the concept of flux in Heraclitus.

Remark - the remark is ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato(n) in the latter's work 'Cratylus'. What Plato tries to do is point out an incoherence in Heraclitus. First Plato argues that Heraclitus assumes a law of flux - all things are in a state of change. Second that Heracllitus presumes a opposites are the same. Thus everything is and isn't the same. For Plato this then is a contradiction and denies the Law of Non-Contradiction. The quote is Plato's misunderstanding or poor recall of Heraclitus.

TBH I'm not sure what the question means by 'clear sense' I've never seen that in Kant. But then again I'm not a Kantean scholar and am not au fait with all his work. I'm also not a great fan - I find him turgid. Now phenomenology and post structuralism...

Kant is both a bit of a Skeptic and also tends to favour transcendental idealism and rejects rationalism and empiricism unless synthasised.

Antinomy, in terms of his 'Critique of Pure Reason' - as a Kantean concept points to a fundamental methodological and metaphysical confusion in rationalist philosophy. For Kant, we cannot know things as they are in themselves and that our knowledge is subject to the conditions of our experience. The antinomies occur where there is a confusion that relates something as a noumena or a phenomena when they are not.

Heraclitus (Cratylus is the name of a book by Plato on pre-socratic philosophy) was a pre-socratic.

Sorry to argue with you (I am just a mere apprentice ) but according to Wiki, Cratylus is a philosopher, about which Platon wrote a book, with his name. I am just a bit confused now, I know that wiki uses to be wrong tho

The only Cratylus I ever came across in philosophy was the one that Plato uses in one of Socratic dialogues and in his 'Cratylus'. Wiki may be right and he might be the son of Heraclitus though. There are lots of ancient Greeks philosophers and its a long time that I did either pre-socratic or platonic philosophy so it's a definite possibility . Heraclitus - as the source of that quote/mis-quote is however generally taken to be pre-socratic though.

Also, I tend to use the English translations, and as with any translation names very often get messed up a bit. (As an example, English tend to use Plato, everyone else tend to use Platon.) Doesn't help that there are also an awful lot pre-Enlightenment philosophers who had either similar, or worst, the same names. There's more than one Diogenes for example .

Heraclitus as a 'dark philosopher' - yes I think you're right, probably refers to Heraclitus as being difficult to understand as he's regarded as a bit contradictory and less than coherent. Think it was one of the Diogenes that started it off.